From the archives: Library photos show Hoover's campaign train leaving Omaha in November 1932
Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover waved from the rear platform as the train headed west days before the 1932 election, according to Omaha Public Library's archives.
Omaha Commons revisits photographs from Omaha Public Library, bringing moments from Omaha’s past to today’s readers.
OMAHA — Two photographs preserved in Omaha Public Library’s digital archives capture President Herbert Hoover’s campaign train departing Omaha in the closing days of the 1932 presidential race. The library dates both images to Nov. 6, 1932, two days before the election.
Taken by photographer Louis A. Leppke, the images show the departure from two perspectives. In one, Hoover and first lady Lou Henry Hoover wave from the train’s rear platform toward people on the street above as it passes an iron works near 17th Street. Mrs. Hoover holds a bouquet of roses.
According to the library’s notes, the train stopped briefly at Union Station on 10th Street before continuing west across Nebraska toward Denver on a whistle-stop tour ahead of the Nov. 8 election.
The second photograph shows the locomotive rounding a curve, a cloud of steam or smoke rising from its stack, with Omaha’s eastern skyline behind it.
Together, the photographs preserve a glimpse of a presidential campaign visit and the railroad landscape that connected Omaha to the nation.
This article is a contemporary summary of the library's historical photograph records.
Source: Omaha Public Library Digital Archives, Louis Leppke Collection, Hoover train pulling out (Leppke_039) and Hoover train pulling out (Leppke_040), opened Nov. 3, 2026.
How we checked this: Reported from the Omaha Public Library digital archives (omahalibrary.contentdm.oclc.org), Louis Leppke collection, items id/48 and id/24, opened Nov. 3, 2026, at 6:50 p.m. (id/48) and 6:49 p.m. (id/24) CT, and checked against the record by our copy desk before publishing.